Byrne Elliott Music – Age Of Enlightenment

Byrne Elliott Music – Age Of Enlightenment – Album Review
Oh, if only we were actually IN the Age Of Enlightenment instead of whatever history will call these dark & bizarre times we’re a part of now, right? I’m sure most of us would happily make the trade, even if the Wi-Fi wouldn’t be nearly as reliable and has a password that you’d need the dictionary to look up the meaning to before you entered it in. Alright…I’m kidding about some of that stuff, clearly – not all of it, but some. I’ll let you decide which parts.
Anyhow. Byrne Elliott Music…a collaborative project that welcomes “passionate singers, musicians, recording producers, recording engineers, and entertainment companies” to join in on the fun. That’s a good first impression to make – and if that list of entities applies to YOU, maybe it’s time you called up Byrne Elliott Music and let them know your schedule is flexible. Obviously, with a wide open door to the craft like that, you can expect a lot of diversity within the music itself, and that different records would theoretically emphasize different aspects of music & such…which in itself, creates quite a catalog over the course of time. With the Age Of Enlightenment, as you can hear from the opening track, BEM has opted to make period-based music that reflects the beauty and wonder of that time, well-known to be one of the most optimistic points of our history. As you listen to “Age of Enlightenment” unfold, you get the sense of inspiration that would have been found in abundance way back then, accompanied by the classical sound of music that would have been even more common at that time, long before video killed the radio star. I like what I hear in “Age Of Enlightenment” – it’s sweetly triumphant and well composed – it feels like the start of an adventure that we’d all want to take part in and very welcoming at the same time. Gorgeous really. “Age Of Enlightenment” has a stunningly warm glow that gently envelops you.
Do I like “Sunlight” even more than “Age Of Enlightenment?” Probably! I don’t think we ultimately need to compare each and every track to each other along the way, I’m more or less stating that Byrne Elliott Music is off to a great start with this record. Personally, I’m very attached to the piano as that’s the sound I remember waking up to for the majority of my childhood, so I’m always going to love tunes that are centered around that particular instrument like “Sunlight” is. BEM has a great understanding of what the mission is here though…the music is historical, cultured, and really well conceived…all of these elements add up to a highly satisfying experience that immerses you in a sound lost, but not forgotten. Obviously, the shift in how we enjoy & listen to music has made sounds like what you’ll hear on “Sunlight” drastically less common in the current landscape, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In instrumental albums like this one, or the scores to soundtracks in every show and movie we watch, or theatre productions if you’re feeling so inclined…you can find great music like this, it’s just more of a hunt to find it as opposed to the Age Of Enlightenment, where it would have been more available to us. Absolutely beautiful stuff here on “Sunlight” – the melody is genuinely special, and entirely endearing.
And then, “Calamity” strikes! Okay…that sounds dramatic – but so too does the music, and to be honest with ya, it feels a little out of place where it sits in the lineup on Age Of Enlightenment. Of course I’m happy to welcome the diversity of sound, but by the same token, I’m probably looking for a little more of a gradual fluidity to how the set-list moves. “Calamity” feels declarative…like a song that is ready to punch you in the nose to get your attention…that’s the kind of shift in sound we’re talking about here in context of the record. As a single on its own, you wouldn’t really notice that, but here coming directly after “Sunlight” and its gentle demeanor, “Calamity” feels a bit like a bridge too far in that regard. Still a good song by any definition mind you…I don’t feel half the attachment to it that I felt towards the opening two tracks, but it’s still entertaining and engaging. It feels more quest-like…you know…some of that grab your horses and head for the hills type of tune where the battle to be had ain’t all that far off.
I dig the use of choir in “La Seconda Venuta Di Cristo” & I can appreciate the general approach to making what we’ve come to regard as fairly cinematic sound. Where dissecting this record becomes an enormous challenge is trying to discern how much of this will appeal to the masses out there. Again, if you were to put a song like “La Seconda Venuta Di Cristo” in the context of a film like Gladiator somewhere, or you heard it in church on Sunday, nobody would blink twice or even question it being there…but to put on Age Of Enlightenment for many folks in this day & age is also a challenge of its own, and I recognize that too. Trust me when I tell ya that, if you know what you’re in-store for, and you’re directly seeking out an album that sounds like Age Of Enlightenment, that BEM is going to supply all that you were looking for and then some as you listen to it…but it’s way harder to say definitively that an album like this has the potential to appeal to the average everyday listener. Believe me, I wish it was just easy for me to say that everyone that stumbles across this album will enjoy what they hear or at the very least, appreciate what they find & the effort it took to create it – but objectively speaking, that’s not the world we’re living in. It’ll be a genuine challenge to get this album heard, despite how good it is. I like “La Seconda Venuta Di Cristo,” but even I’m way more in favor of the album’s earlier delicacies.
“Olympic Destiny” kind of meets us in the middle of between what songs one & two were like versus what songs three & four became…and honestly, might have been more effectively used as a transitionary tune in that regard. That being said…yeah…I still enjoyed this as well, and probably a little more than the previous two I’d say – there’s more emphasis placed on the melody at the heart of it all, and that’s usually going to be what wins me over on a personal level more easily. You still get that sense of triumph as well, which is a good match for the titular implications, and it never felt like “Olympic Destiny” went too far with its more dramatic/adventurous moments. It doesn’t stay in the quaint and humble gears it begins with, but it does go on to rediscover them later on in the song as well. Like I was alluding to, “Olympic Destiny” seems to kind of straddle two realms of sound, but it’s effective in doing so. The bold comes out bold, the mellow comes out mellow, and both still seem to fit & belong to each other, complementing the dynamics they add to the energy of this song in their own specific ways.
“American Revolution” – now wouldn’t it be a great thing to see THAT happen right now at this crucial point in history! I’m Canadian, so I don’t have any stake in this whatsoever, but it sure seems like they could use a revolution right now. Again, it’s not a bad tune…it’s probably not really what I’m personally looking for by comparison to how the album originally started out, but it’s not really fair to judge something on what it isn’t either, right? So sure…”American Revolution” serves its purpose, and it sounds good. I don’t really have too many thoughts on this one – it’s as well played & produced as any of the songs on this record are – BEM’s standards for quality never drop. I think the biggest questions that revolve around this entire album is whether or not people will feel like they’re hearing something that they haven’t heard in some way, shape, or form before…I think that’s much more up for debate. As much as we might like or love the sound of something like “American Revolution,” we have definitely experienced something similar along our own individual journeys of listening to music. Maybe it helps if you have a patriotic bone in your body? Someone will have to tell me if that’s the case – I don’t have those bones. I’m just a guy that knows what sounds good to his ears, and this song still checks that box.
There you have it though…as soon as “Hope For The Hopeless” began, I was like, okay…this is probably a lot more in the gear I’m looking for and where I felt like Byrne Elliott Music was most effective earlier on in the set-list. I don’t know that I’d quite say it reaches the captivating magic we hear in “Sunlight” or the album’s title track, but it’s closer than we’ve been since it first began, and I’m happy about that. Short at less than 2:15 in length…I would have likely enjoyed a five minute version of this particular song, but I’ll take what I can get as well. No real complaints from me when it comes to “Hope For The Hopeless” – I mean…yeah…the most I’ll concede to ya is that it feels short, and that’s not really anything that has to do with anything – we’ve got the luxury to repeat any song we’d like to under the sun. So excuse me if I have to double up on “Hope For The Hopeless” to get what I personally need – as far as what BEM has brought to it, I think it’s charming, sweet, and certainly pleasant to listen to. The use of pace and space in this song is a large part of how Byrne Elliott Music gets the maximum value out of every note and tone that we hear…as they say, it’s not always about what is played, so much as what isn’t. “Hope For The Hopeless” is a great example of the art of patience in the true craft of composition.
I like “Haunted Love” quite a bit…to the point where I’d probably be inclined to list it amongst the album’s best tunes. Which is kind of interesting to me in the sense that, I don’t know I really get a whole lot of the “haunted” aspect out of “Haunted Love” – it spends a lot more time on the “love” side of its audible story I reckon, but that’s okay with me. It’s quite beautiful when it comes right down to it, and possesses that sweet sound of fascination & wonder combined…I think this will definitely be one of the more universally adored songs on Age Of Enlightenment. I’d love to get BEM’s take on it really…like, I’d love to know what it is that makes this song have a “haunted” dimension to it to them, you know what I mean? Clearly there’s an inspiration that comes from somewhere, or it would have been cited in the title…somewhere in the process of creating this song, Byrne Elliott Music felt a haunting vibe reveal itself, and I’m just wondering where and how and why and what and when it occurs I guess? To be clear, I also don’t feel like titles to songs ever really have to echo what they might or might not sound like…so there’s that…but yeah…the “love” part I understand, because we can hear it, we can feel it, and heck, we can practically reach out and touch it like it touches us when we listen to it…but “haunted?” The jury is still out on that aspect of this song…so it might be the perfect time to explain its inspiration if BEM were to ever take this tune out onto the stage somewhere, just so we understand the connection.
“Lessons Never Learned” ends up being one of the more interesting cuts on the album, largely because it’s not leaning into the period-based inspirations that the rest of the album has taken such a deep dive into by comparison – this is way more along the lines of something you’d find in the contemporary Easy Listening section. In that respect, you could argue that Byrne Elliott Music has once again found a way to expand the potential reach of the album by broadening the spectrum of sound…and of course, the flipside of that coin suggests that “Lessons Never Learned” is also a little less cohesive or in-step with the majority of the material on Age Of Enlightenment. I’ll put it to ya this way…I don’t think it’s too far off sound-wise that listeners wouldn’t readily accept what they find in this song, and for what it’s worth, as much as the label of Easy Listening basically terrifies me, “Lessons Never Learned” is quite pleasant to listen to and undeniably enjoyable. You see folks? I’m nothing but objective, always. I’m not going to claim that I’m jumping up and down excitedly about this quaint & mellow tune, but there’s a humbleness to it that my ears appreciate, and it’s so well composed & played that you really can’t help but give it your full attention. The flute in the lead is really well done too – and honestly, that’s pretty relevant when you consider the fact that we’ve had at least two flute-based records in review on these very pages of ours in the last two or three weeks. Flute’s having a moment right now y’all…that’s not my opinion, that’s a fact based on what’s been coming through the ol’ musical pipeline here, but that is a fact that works in BEM’s favor as it makes a song like “Lessons Never Learned” even more relevant.
Wrapping things up with “Dance Of Life,” the album heads back towards it’s time-based vibes, but not so much that you’d directly associate this final song with being a period-piece so much as just a really sweet piano-based melody. Thankfully, “Dance Of Life” shifts out of the dangers of being labelled as Easy Listening as well…though I’m sure some out there will argue any piano-based tune would still be able to get away with being in that category. And there you have it folks – that’s one of the many reasons why genres are becoming more & more irrelevant these days. I feel like Byrne Elliott Music saved quite a few of its best tunes for the end of this record…I might even be inclined to say that the final three represent a lot of the best that Age Of Enlightenment has to offer. “Dance Of Life” might even end up being at the top of the whole pack…I’ve had many moments in listening to this album over the last week where I’d get to the end and feel like this song deserved a standing ovation, even if it was just my own to the speakers in front of me…it’s such a magnificently beautiful song. From its inherently heartfelt melody, to the sweetness that resonates in every note and tone you’ll hear – I’m absolutely satisfied with “Dance Of Life” being the conclusion to this record. Bookended by a spectacular start and an even stronger finish, Age Of Enlightenment takes a noticeable turn in the middle where it aims for diversity & versatility somewhat at the cost of being less like the more engaging material surrounding it, but overall, I felt like Byrne Elliott Music championed a highly cultured experience in music that really matters. This is outside of the mainstream for sure, but in what becomes an undeniably educational way that celebrates a lot of the history of music, and who we are as the people that historically enjoy it.
Find more music by Byrne Elliott Music from the official page at Apple Music here: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/byrne-elliott-music/1744155168
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